


Glue

by ReaperWriter



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU modern, AU no powers, M/M, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Threesome, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 22:34:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16841758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaperWriter/pseuds/ReaperWriter
Summary: AU-Modern (No Powers)Sam runs a veteran's support group when he meets Steve, who lost his everything in the war. Just as they find something new in each other, that everything comes back.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a drabble for my good friend Zarhooie on Tumblr and rearchived here because Tumblr is becoming Dumbr.
> 
> M rating is for allusions to sexy times without graphic descriptions.

He meets Steve on a crisp autumn day in the basement of the community center where his outreach group meets. Steve’s new, and by the way he flinches when the old metal door, built during the nuclear shelter wishful thinking of the 1950s, slams shut with gusto, he hasn’t been stateside long. He doesn’t share the first meeting much, beyond that he was in the Army, and now he’s between jobs. 

But he listens intently as sharp eyed Maria, whose left hand is gone, talks about the IED that took out her Humvee and the one in front of her in Kandahar. He listens as Calvin talks about sitting in the gun port of a gunner’s seat of a AH-1 SuperCobra, taking fire and being able to see that some of those he is shooting are mere children. And he listens to Reggie, who saw action in Vietnam, saw his buddy Frank that he grew up with cut in half by machine gun fire, and who shows up from time to time when he’s gotten sober and into some place with a bed and three squares. Steve listens.

After the meeting, as the group breaks up, Steve stays and helps him stack the chairs and empty out the coffee urn and clean up the empties. He doesn’t say much, but when he makes a smart-assed remark, Sam finds himself grinning like a fool. They walk out together, Steve tugging a fairly ugly scarf around his neck. “Your wife make you that?” Sam asks, curious.

Steve goes a little red around the ears. “Nah. Just a good friend of mine. She said knitting’s relaxing. Can’t really tell her she’s not good at it.”

Sam smiles at that, both because he has those kind of friends (he has a set of really hideous throw pillows and a craptacular vase), and because Steve doesn’t have a wife.

“See you next week, Rogers?”

“Yeah.”

****

When Steve does share, he does it cautiously. The group is smaller today. Reggie’s off on a tear again (Sam has a couple buddies in the Metro PD keeping an eye out) and Stu, who can’t sit still, is in South Carolina for a buddy’s funeral . (The kid ate his gun a week ago Tuesday. Stu cried for almost five hours while Sam held his hand and called airlines for him).

Steve starts quietly, talking about growing up in Brooklyn a runt of a kid, sick half the time, with a best friend who always looked out for him. How it took until his third year of art school for nature to finally wake up and kick his ass into shape (and it’s some shape). How his best friend, Bucky, had gotten him out of too many scrapes to count, until the day midway through Steve’s senior year, when Bucky disappeared while on patrol near Fallujah. Steve had walked into a recruitment office that day and signed on for OCS. Had shipped out to training the day he finished his finals, before his graduation.

He had talked his way into the Rangers and then into a deployment nearly immediately after he had gone through training, and then managed to talk and talk and talk until he was in Anbar province. And then he searched. He sought out intel. He didn’t do downtime. He was dogged and persistent, and his men loved him. He promoted up to Captain faster than should have been strictly possible. He had searched, and searched, and searched. And then they had found the insurgent’s nest. And in it, one combat boot, a pair of blood spattered dog tags, and a shriveled human arm whose DNA confirmed what the chips of metal said. Sgt. James Buchanan Barnes was moved from MIA to KIA.

Steve held out for another year before he went to his CO and asked to resign his commission. He just…he couldn’t do it. Not anymore.

To most of the room, Steve’s is a story of a friend lost, maybe a brother. But Sam sees through him. He knows the look in his eyes, and the anguish in his voice. He felt them when Riley fell right out of the sky. And he knows right now that with what Steve’s feeling, he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.

****

Steve kisses him at Christmas. Sam hasn’t got anybody outside of his group, and he usually spends the holiday checking on them and visiting the wards at the VA. When he found out Steve also had no one (his parents are dead, and now so is his…Bucky), he invited him along. They end afternoon of Christmas eve walking along the World War II monument at the Capitol Mall. As the light starts to fade and a soft snow starts to fall, Sam turns slightly to ask Steve if he wants to get Chinese and watch Die Hard (his very favorite Christmas film), when suddenly warm, work rough hands are cupping his face and lips and pressing against his and he is so very, very fucked, because it’s like being hit by lightning.

He freezes for a second, and Steve stops and pulls away, mumbling apologies. At least, until Sam grabs him by his coat and hauls him back in with a passion and a will and a need he forgot he was capable of.

They do get Chinese (Steve has the metabolism of maybe five guys) and they watch Die Hard and then White Christmas because Steve’s a sentimental idiot, and then fall asleep together on Sam’s couch.

****

The first time Sam takes Steve, it’s slow, like deep cane molasses, languid and gentle, a week before Valentine ’s Day. He learns Steve has a repertoire of curse words that would shock a sailor, and that he likes it when Sam’s nails dig into the curve of his hips, and that he mewls like a newborn kitten when he’s close.

The first time Steve takes Sam, it is Valentine’s Day and it’s all heat and fire and consuming want, hovering between the land of too much, too much, too much and oh god, please don’t stop. Steve learns that Sam becomes deeply spiritual when he’s not in control, that gentle pressure right above his tail bone on a thrust in when nearly have him keening, and that he can’t help tears when he comes.

They map each other, over the next few months, until the world comes crashing down.

****

Sgt. James Buchanan Barnes is found in a hole in the ground near Tikrit, his shoulder a poorly cauterized stump, his mind a mess, in late May. Steve gets the call as his next of kin at 3:30AM on a Tuesday, and Sam comes awake in an instant when he hears the choked sob. And he knows, knows he’s going to lose someone he loves again. Because he’s heard so many stories about Bucky, and he knows he will never, ever compete.

Steve surprises him when he asks him to come with him when they transfer Bucky state side to the Psychiatric Institute of Washington (the VA is simply not equipped). Sam’s heart hurts, but he can’t deny this man, so they go and find a man with shaggy brown hair and dark eyes, hunched over and rocking himself quietly in a chair as an orderly watches from a discrete distance. Over and over, the man mumbles, “Please, no, Sister. Please, no, sister.”

Steve makes a soft chocked noise, and tries to talk to him, but the man just rocks harder. Eventually, Sam drives Steve home.

“Sister Mary Lawrence was this mean old bitch of a nun in the orphanage where Bucky and I ended up,” he says, his voice a jagged whisper. “She used to beat us with an iron barred strap if we broke the rules.”

Sam holds Steve that night, and for the nights to come. Just holds him and accepts whatever solace he could take from this for the time being. And maybe, just maybe, a dark and broken part of him hoped Bucky never really came back.

****

Bucky came back on a hot July afternoon, a Saturday. He and Steve had shown up with a watermelon, and sat with him out on a bench outside. And on his third piece, Bucky looked over at Steve, and clear as day said “Thanks, Punk.”

And Steve began to cry. Sam thought this might be the end.

Instead, Steve came to him with a proposal. He had a small townhouse (his art had taken off in a surprising way). He could work in the home studio, and they could bring Bucky home with them. Sam was so confused, he mumbled something and left, walking aimlessly until he was at the Mall, and then around and around. Finally, hours later, he came back.

“Okay.”

****

It wasn’t easy. Bucky had bad days, really bad days, and okay days. Sam came to look forward to group and to errands and to getting out of the house. They each had a bedroom in Steve’s place, and some nights he slept alone, and some he slept with Steve, though it was just sleeping. And sometimes, when the nightmares got really bad, they would sleep bracketing Bucky, creating a warm, safe cocoon for him to hide in. Those nights were both good and bad.

Because as Sam got to know Bucky, the real Bucky, he saw what Steve did. He saw the scrappy kid from Brooklyn who stood up for his weaker friend. He saw the young man who catted around with a lot of girls (because Bucky looked at people, not parts) until Steve finally told him how he felt. He saw the tough Sargent who went to hell and back for his men. And he saw the scarred kid who was terrified of being beaten by an evil old nun. And much like with Steve, Sam fell. Which only made things worse. Because now, when the shoe dropped, he would lose all of it. And Sam really didn’t know if he was strong enough for that.

****

They were sitting on the couch in the living room, watching some classic horror movie, pizza boxes and bottles of beer on the table, when he glanced over to ask Bucky if he wanted another beer, and instead found hard, demanding lips pressed against his. A broken sound came from the couch and it took him a moment to realize it was him, as Steve’s hands came around his waist and Bucky’s good arm wrapped around his head. He thought his heart might hammer out of his chest until Bucky stopped and looked at him, a shit eating grin on his face.

“If you want out, say so now.”

“Hell, no.” He would have liked to sound firmer, stronger, but what he sounded was wrecked. Behind him, he felt Steve’s chuckle vibrate through his chest.

“Good. Cause there’s no getting rid of us now.”

Later, much later, tangled up on Steve’s king sized bed in a pile of limbs and sweat, his body spooned into Steve’s left side and Bucky’s head pillowed on his right, Sam thinks that maybe, just maybe, the good guys really do win some after all.


	2. Pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short follow up drabble written for Zarhooie.

Steve knows this shouldn’t work. Three broken people, missing figurative (and some literal) parts trying to be together, to be a family should fail. Stress should buckle the fractures and the whole thing should crumble into dust. But it doesn’t.

Bucky came back to them slowly, and there are still days when he’s other. When whatever happened to him in that hellhole the army finally pulled him from gets to be too much and he just shuts down. Days like those, Steve’s grateful he works from home. That he can put down his charcoal and his brushes, and just be there. Just hold Bucky until the worst of it passes.

And he’s grateful for Sam. Sam, who has the connections to the best shrinks. Sam, who understands more of the psychology than he ever could. Sam, who knows when to push Bucky and when to back off, like he’s been there all their lives. Sam, who will get the groceries and the cleaning and pick up meds when he just needs to stay.

On the good days, though? Oh, the good days are so damn good. When Bucky calls him punk and Sam birdie. When the three of them go for early morning runs at the capital, or spend lazy Saturdays hiking in the Shenandoah National Park. Long weekends driving down to the beach, sno-cones coloring both of their tongues and making them taste like cherry and grape when he kisses them.

They get looks, sometimes, but he refuses to care. He’s out enough for him, and that’s what matters. Love is love is love. And he loves them. God help him, he loves them both more than he thought possible. Loves the sounds Sam makes when he slides inside of him while Bucky fist’s glows around his dark cock. Loves the whimper it rings from Bucky when Sam take him while Steve licks his nipple. Love the feel of either of them in him, pressed against him, chest hair tickling his skin and stubble leaving a burn on his neck.

It shouldn’t work, but Steve doesn’t question it any more. Maybe they fill each other’s cracks. Maybe they shore up each other’s fault lines. All Steve knows is that they are more than the sum of their parts. Like family is supposed to be.


End file.
